Sideboard (15)

Description

Mono black control with the trading post card advantage/recursion engine. I based this off of the MBC primer in the mtg salvation forums and molded it into what you see here. It's extremely powerful and fun (threw it together at the last minute last night and won my first FNM!). Specific card explanations below:

Spot removal suite: 2 ea doom blade/dismember/go for the throat. I love running a 6 spot removal suite in this deck. Most of the time I have it when I need it - whether it's spot removing the creature naya pod just played and is trying to pod after I board wiped or I'm trying to slow the early game aggro onslaught, it works.

Board wipe: 4 MB Mutilate 2 SB BSZ - mutilate is amazing - hexproof? indestructible? doesn't matter, they all bow to the power of the swamp. BSZ is also amazing for that reason, I usually side it in when I face a deck that requires more board control (like tokens).

Card advantage engine: 3 Trading Post 3 Solemn Simulacrum 2 ea mycosynth wellspring/ichor wellspring/nihil spellbomb. Ok nihil's aren't strictly card advantage, but, the way I see it, having a nihil on the board against anything with any sort of recursion or flashback (which is quite a few decks lately) is a huge positional advantage in the thumb wrestling war. I like to call it card advantage because the opponent wastes resources (mana or cards) to try to interact with their graveyard, I crack the nihil, then I pay a B and draw. Just feels like CA to me.

Mimic vat: why would I MB this you ask? Excellent question! Solemn in a vat with a trading post or phyrexia's core on the board = 2 land drops/turn and draw 2 if you use the post to sac the solemn token -- oh and peck at your opponent for 2 before you sac the solemn token. And that's just the beginning of how cute the vat is. Wurmcoil in the vat? 12 point life swing + card draw and two tokens I can keep with a post on the field? Yes please. Grave Titan in the vat - 4 2/2 zombie tokens a turn while running a 6/6 deathtouch into the opponent's face? And still, that's just the beginning - I won't even go into the 'why are you hitting yourself' comedy that is vatting your opponent's creatures. One of my favorite late game moves is to cast a Titan - board wipe - vat the titan and throw him back on the field - attack the turn he came down AND keep the 4 free 2/2 zombies (trading post food) - and, it doesn't matter the board presence my opponent had because all of his stuff was wiped. I think mimic vat deserves a 1-of in the MB just for the force multiplication it adds (that, and we can recur it should it receive hate with Trading Post/buried ruin!).

Spine of Ish Sah: this was an SB card that I decided to run MB in place of the 3rd Lilly of the Dark Realms I had in here. This is kind of the Yin to my Karn's Yang. Complete and utter board control late game, and every time I sack it (and it self recurs) I draw a card (with trading post). This also helps fill the gaps MBC has (lack of artifact and enchantment hate).

Increasing ambition/consume spirit: Yes, I know, two very different spells but to me, not really. Consume spirit saved me once and won me two separate games over a 5 round/10 game period. It's an alternate win con after I've ult'd with Lilly or even if I haven't but most of my land is on the board (which happens more often than not). The ambition is to grab the spirit OR anything else I need (spine/vat/karn/another post because the one I had received hate (as it so often does)).

Duress: This doubles as my early game "what is your hand looking like, sir?" and a "I hope you weren't planning on using that planeswalker/artifact/token producer" type of effect. I run despise in the SB to replace these against heavy aggro decks (obviously).

Mana base: Once I get to 4 land, I'm set the rest of the game. 24 feels about right to me (even though it may seem light in a 61 card control deck) because of the mycosynths/solemns/lillys and just the shear card draw power of the deck. I don't think I got land screwed once throughout the whole FNM last night.

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Exsanguinate is the consume spirit replacement. The primary difference is that it gets around any prevention spells like Safe Passage -- and it's great for those casual multiplayer matches (hits everyone at the same time).

I run 1ea Doom Blade/Dismember/Go For the Throat to be able to modify my 6 spot removal suite. I'll throw in a doom blade and dismember over the 2 GFTTs against naya pod. Or a GFTT and a dismember over the 2 doomblades against zombies. You get the idea.

The rest is pretty standard SB stuff. Grafdigger's Cage doesn't actually hurt us at all. We may have plenty of recursion but we're not casting anything straight from the graveyard or our decks.

Updates

Round 1 was vs a Trading Post-less MBC. I let him play his hand and lead the tempo while I killed anything he put on the board (nighthawks/griselbrands). The first game lasted almost 30 minutes but have Trading post means I win the attrition war. 1-0

Round 2 was vs a Grixis Control. The pilot was a level 2 judge and taught me a thing or two about control and MTG in general. The one game we play lasted an hour and ended in a draw. Somehow with a table full of artifacts and tezzeret he couldn't seal the deal against my batterskull/wurmcoils and I. Life totals at the end of the game: me 43 (he ulted tezzeret twice with 12 artifacts on the board) him 90. 1-0-1

Round 3 was vs an Esper Control (out of the 16 people there I played the only other 3 people playing control that night in the first 3 rounds). I'm not sure if it was his piloting skills, his deck, or my luck, but both games did not go well for him. His DoJ was useless. His fatties didn't help with my vat on the table. And his mana leaks were useless (he could either leak my early game wellsprings or solemns, which I could recur, but that was it since I didn't dare throw my Post out until i had enough to cover a leak). Other than that I didn't see much more of his deck as it was my quickest 2-0 that night. 2-0-1

Round 4 was vs a GW aggro and was embarassing. Somehow the first game I drew all 4 planeswalkers I was running (3 lillys and a karn) in the first 13 cards of my deck (my starting hand had 1 lilly). All those dead cards meant no removal, and that meant I couldn't keep up. Game 2 I just forgot to sideboard (was so used to the long control matches I had completely forgotten sideboarding was a thing haha). So that was my fault. 0-2 on that one :-(. 2-1-1

I barely squeezed into the top 4 by winning a tie with the third tiebreaker (opponent's GAME win%) - and only because the MBC I played at the beginning of the night 2-0'd someone in the 4th round (thank you lurch!).

Round 5 was vs a 4 color pod and was probably one of the best (if not, the best) games of magic I've played. Game 1 was pretty close until I used a post to gain 4 life (thinking I could survive one more round so I could get my wurmcoil in and stabilize and he responded with a restoration angel on his blade splicer during my turn. Couldn't survive that. Game 2 he couldn't keep up with my board wipes and spot removal and ended up playing off the top of his deck until he was dead. Game 3 was epic. Seemed like it lasted at least an hour (though it was probably more like 30-45 minutes. He got 2 pods out, I had my card advantage engine roaring. As soon as he would start to get the upper hand I would wipe him. As soon as I would start to get some board presence he would top deck a zealous conscripts. Once I board wiped him for the third time and with 2 pods he was able to throw 5 creatures back on the board in one turn with 0 cards in card (playing off the topdeck). In the end he was at 15 life I was sitting at 6, he had restoration angels and thragtusks and a couple other fatties out and I had 2 wurmcoils on the board with a consume spirit in the hand and 13 land down - I swung with both wurmcoils and he chose to only block one with his thragtusk (I'm guessing to try to kill me the following turn, which he had the presence to do if he only split one of my wurms and not both) and let 6 damage through which put me in game ending consume spirit range. By and far the most exciting game of the night.

Top 2 - by this time it was pretty late and I think the pilot of the delver deck I played against was half asleep because it was a comparatively quick 2-0 for me (he was making mistake after mistake).

All in all a great night and the record stands at 4-1-1 for this deck.

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